Thousands of people struggle with crutches and wheelchairs all their life. There are new wheel based solutions that include balancing features but stairs, which have always been impossible, though climbable while balanced on wheels, can be very dangerous if the user is bumped or encounters a slippery or faulty surface and it isn""t a smooth ride or an impressive entrance. Also, some paraplegics can only crudely control a powered wheelchair with their head or mouth movements and then only under almost ideal, smooth terrain circumstances and within a very limited scope of activities. For many, hands and feet are useless making them helpless dependents on others.
Using key elements of the disclosed invention, even these paraplegics can walk, climb stairs, hold a coffee cup, eat and drink. A visit to a hospital ward full of paraplegics is an effective gauge to see how impossible this has, up to now, seemed to the scientific and medical community.
This wheel-less, much more stable apparatus and process allows the user to get up out of a chair (or bed), stand up, walk on uneven terrain, climb stairs and appear, with ordinary street clothes, normal. It is a spin-off from other pending patents that resulted in the design of
1. lightweight, body worn equipment under normal clothing (but above a special layer) that controls and empowers the joints without bulky hydraulic levers,etc. (allowing the formerly disabled to look and move normally) and
2. unique software approaches (also a spin-off from another development) allowing precise and fluidly coordinated body control, with simple user direction of the new equipment.
3. an integrated balance control, user guidance and script process that allows the user to perform complex tasks in strange surroundings and on any terrain.
Even someone without control of their arms and legs can walk normally, look normal, open doors and, very importantly, stand normally at eye level with their peers. For many people, this is a complete solution eliminating the need for wheel chair ramps, wheel chairs, help in feeding or even special bathroom accommodations.
Additionally, the same 3 means provide a way for someone rehabilitating from an injury that has left them with little or no control or strength to be able to walk and work while protecting them from falling when their strength gives out suddenly. Gradually, over time, the amount of support and guidance provided by the system is decreased as the patient""s strength and coordination return. However, the patient is under no circumstances allowed to fall. In addition to getting the patient up and walking quickly (speeding recovery, preventing lung and circulation diseases, while reducing atrophy and in-hospital time), it does so more safely and without the constant attention of medical personnel protecting them from injury. Also, much of the tedious physical therapy process of joint travel advancement therapy and muscle stretching can be done any time the patient desires, without burdening scarce medical personnel resources and without burdening special care facilities. There are many more benefits but I""m afraid I may have already put you to sleep.
This is accomplished in combination with the foundational patent xe2x80x9cNatural Robot Controlxe2x80x9d and adds the above additional benefits.
The lightweight, date efficient and powerful and accurate joint control.
Consider a healthy person of similar build to the paraplegic wearing the same local user""s equipment described above and cataloging certain operations from certain standard positions. As he gets up and moves around in the equipment, some things are done a little differently than above. Instead of the local processing means transmitting KCM""s to the remote, these KCM""S stop short of transmission and are stored in local memory as steps, tiny timeslices of full body, simultaneous movements.
For example, from a standard, seated erect position (which itself becomes a static set of joint positions in a database table) the action cataloger leans forward and then stands up to a standard, erect standing position. Each change of the joint positions is recorded for each tiny slice of time throughout the operation in the processing means and recorded as an action (in this case we""ll call it xe2x80x9cStandingErectFromErectSeatedPositionxe2x80x9d). In this sample embodiment, the data is stored in a relational database table. This is not the most compact database embodiment but it is the most easily understood. In many applications more compact forms such as traditional fixed length or delimited data formats with digital compression will be used. However, data is data and, for the sake of simplicity we use a familiar format for explanation here.
Extended Data Support Formats
The first table is named Actions.dbf and, contains the following fields.
There is a xe2x80x9c1 to manyxe2x80x9d relationship between this table and the one below. That is, for each record in the table above, there can be many in the table below.
The second table is named Positions.dbf and contains the following fields:
It should be noted that the Positions table is also used to store other key data besides the above described applications.